Khamenei is useless – however the future for the Iranian individuals is dangerously unsure | EUROtoday

After weeks of huge army build-up, America and Israel’s joint assault on Iran has taken out the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the person who not solely led the Islamic Republic however outlined it.

Tehran has retaliated by firing drones and ballistic missiles, apparently in all instructions, because the Middle East is plunged into an unprecedented interval of turmoil.

And within the eye of that storm are the individuals of Iran. Tens of 1000’s of them have bravely taken to the streets, calling for his or her rights and regime change since December. They confronted a bloody slaughter, mass arrests and weeks of guarantees from the Trump administration that “help is on its way”.

Their future is now much more dangerously unsure.

“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” Donald Trump declared to the Iranian individuals on Saturday. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance in generations.”

But one of many largest issues from throughout the spectrum of Iranian opposition is that, whereas the Americans have taken out Khamenei, airstrikes don’t make a regime change.

Donald Trump stated the Supreme Leader’s dying is “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country” – but the process for selecting his successor is already underway. There are concerns that, particularly since the last wave of US strikes on Iran in June, the real power has been held in the hands of the Supreme National Security Council and the brutal network of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

And so, instead, this joint operation, when it’s over, will leave a degraded, wounded yet still standing furious regime looking to enact revenge close to home, to pound a population into submission lest they dare heed Trump’s call.

It does not help that the protest movement fizzled out in the bloody crackdown, and never had a clear leader or replacement. That is despite some protesters calling for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah, the monarchy that was toppled in the 1979 revolution, which ushered in the current Islamic Republic.

Even those who support the strikes are concerned, like the Iranian Kurdish separatists, who have some of the few organised armed opposition forces in the country (and, it should be noted, are not in support of a Shah).

“If the strikes don’t end this regime, the next time people rise up it is going to be worse than ever before, especially in the targeted killing of minorities. Massacres will happen,” said Hana Yazdanpana, a member of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, the PAK, an armed Kurdish nationalist movement.

“The silence from the international community after the series of uprisings and calls for help meant hundreds, thousands of youth were captured,” she continued.

“Of course, the strikes are welcomed, but we lost a lot of energy from the people due to past failures to rescue them. We need to bring the hope back.”

And that is the issue, external military pressure may weaken a regime, but it rarely, if ever, ushers in a viable stable alternative, and in the interim, that space during transition is the most dangerous.

“I don’t think Khamenei’s killing will lead to unravelling of the Islamic Republic unless the Israeli-American strikes continue and kill more of Iran’s leaders to the point that the reconstitution becomes impossible,” explains Arash Azizi, the author of What Iranians Want and a historian.

“There is indeed a danger that we end with total chaos inside Iran and even a civil war. That would be the nightmare scenario”.

And maybe that is the point. Israel has a track record of divide and conquer, from Palestine to more recently Syria, where it stirred tensions in the south, piling pressure on the new president of Syria, who oversaw the stunning overthrow of long-term despot Bashar al-Assad.

Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night urged Iranian citizens to “flood the streets and finish the job”. But there are concerns that for Israel, a weakened, destabilised, chaotic Iran is actually preferable to another powerful, western-facing, wealthy player vying for US support in a crowded region.

External affect apart, there may be the IRGC, the cast-iron skeleton of the regime, to take care of. To oust one thing so highly effective, so closely armed and organised, so deeply entrenched would wish much more than a wave of air strikes.

Added to that, Azizi says the actual energy lies with Iran’s military-dominated safety council, which has “effectively run the country since last June.”

“A power struggle will ensue between various factions over the future of power.”

He says whoever comes out on high in Tehran could must recalibrate for survival. Will the stringent ideological anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism die with the Supreme Leader – paving the best way for the US to make a cope with males just like the safety council’s chief Ali Larijani, an ex-IRGC officer?

“Will [that] satisfy them? Or do they really believe their own words about Iranian people now rising up to seize power or for power to pass on an outsider like Reza Pahlavi?” he asks.

The different potential curveball, the unknown issue, is Iran’s proxies within the area, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq.

The Israeli army has claimed that the IRGC had been spending as much as $900 million on proxies, with “most of it going to Hezbollah”. But there gave the impression to be a deafening silence from them as Iran got here underneath assault.

The chief of the Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a limp company assertion saying they might “take action in various activities” in solidarity with Iran, however didn’t elaborate.

As a former British ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton Brown informed me, it was “an uncharacteristically restrained statement supporting Iran”. He stated, “The proxies are diminished”.

“It’s striking that this was the dog that didn’t really bark last June, and it’s possible it won’t bark again,” he added.

“I don’t know how much they’re willing to put their lives on the line if they see this as a lost cause for Iran.”